rhaps have fallen into some
errors of detail, though I have endeavoured to avoid them, but the main
conclusions are, I believe, irrefragable. If they are not, I shall be
obliged to any one who will point out the fallacy in my reasoning; and I
pledge myself to make open retractation, when I resume these papers in a
subsequent number. If they are, then the reader will not fail to see how
large a part of the argument in _Supernatural Religion_ has crumbled to
pieces.

Our author is quite alive to the value of a system of 'positively
enunciating.' [51:1] 'A good strong assertion,' he says, 'becomes a
powerful argument, since few readers have the means of verifying its
correctness.' [51:2] His own assertions, which I quoted at the outset of
this investigation, are certainly not wanting in strength, and I have
taken the liberty of verifying them. Any English reader may do the same.
Eusebius is translated, and so are the Ante-Nicene Fathers.

I now venture on a statement which might have seemed a paradox if it had
preceded this investigation, but which, coming at its close, will, if I
mistake not, commend itself as a sober deduction from facts. _The
silence of Eusebius respecting early witnesses to the Fourth Gospel is
an evidence in its favour._ Its Apostolic authorship had never been
questioned by any Church writer from the beginning, so far as Eusebius
was aware, and therefore it was superfluous to call witnesses. It was
not excused, because it had not been accused. In short, the silence of
Eusebius here means the very opposite to that which our author assumes
it to mean.

If any one demurs to this inference, let him try, on any other
hypothesis, to answer the following questions:--

(1) How is it that, while Eusebius alleges repeated testimonies to the
Epistle to the Hebrews, he is silent from first to last about the
universally acknowledged Epistles of St Paul, such as Romans, 1, 2
Corinthians, and Galatians?

(2) How is it that he does not mention the precise and direct testimony
in Theophilus to the Gospel of St John, while he does mention a
reference in this same author to the Apocalypse?

And this explanation of the silence of Eusebius, while it is demanded by
his own language and practice, alone accords with the known facts
relating to the reception of the Fourth Gospel in the second century.
Its theology is stamped on the teaching of orthodox apologists; its
authority is quoted for the speculative tenets of t